Dear Parents: American Schools Are Controlled by Democrats Who Hate You

Posted on | August 7, 2018 | Comments Off on Dear Parents: American Schools Are Controlled by Democrats Who Hate You

This story is the tip of a very large iceberg:

Shortly after President Trump’s inauguration, a group of public school history teachers in the posh Boston suburb of Newton pledged to reject the “call for objectivity” in the classroom, bully conservative students for their beliefs, and serve as “liberal propagandist[s]” for the cause of social justice. . . .
It was late on a cold and snowy New England evening in February 2017, and Newton North history teacher Isongesit Ibokette was venting at his keyboard about the new guidelines for avoiding bias in teaching. They had been sent out by Newton North’s principal that morning, prompted by the general ill will among teachers for the new occupant of the White House.
The guidelines asked teachers to remain objective while teaching about historical and current events; and to treat all students, regardless of political opinion, with respect. . . .
Ibokette was having none of it. He typed this reply: “I am concerned that the call for ‘objectivity’ may just inadvertently become the most effective destructive weapon against social justice,” and sent it to the members of Newton North’s history department.
Ibokette was responding to an email from another Newton North history teacher, David Bedar . . . [who] has played a significant role in the years-long controversy over anti-Jewish bias in the public schools of the heavily Jewish suburb.
Earlier that February day, Bedar sent an email to fellow Newton North history faculty, accusing President Trump and his supporters of “nativism, xenophobia, homophobia, etc.” . . .
After Bedar complained that he didn’t want to get fired for being a “liberal propagandist,” his fellow history teacher, Ibokette, wrote back: “David, if you get fired for doing exactly what history teachers, and indeed all rational and ethical-minded adults should indeed be doing, I will be right behind you.” . . .
Bedar’s direct supervisor, Newton North history department chair Jonathan Bassett, replied to his revolt against reason with this: “David: Your ‘essay’ is very good, and raises a lot of the questions that we are all dealing with. . . . We are in unprecedented times, and we are all struggling to do good.” . . .

You should read the whole thing. One of the things that any observant and curious parent will discover is that public school teachers have utter contempt for parents. No matter how intelligent or well-educated you are, no matter how successful you may be in your career, the bureaucrats who run the government education system believe that they are infinitely superior to you, in terms of knowing what’s best for your child.

Nothing could be more diametrically opposite to common sense than the stupendous arrogance of the government school bureaucracy. America’s prisons are chock-full of the victims of this perverse system, which every year hands out high-school diplomas to semi-literates who have spent 13 years being “educated” in this taxpayer-funded monstrosity. It is mainly a babysitting service or a juvenile detention facility, depending on the age and disposition of the helpless inmates.

Did you know that education majors (i.e., future teachers) have the lowest SAT scores among university students? While some reasonably intelligent people manage to become teachers despite the general mediocrity typical of teacher-training programs, the system is not defined or controlled by its best minds, but rather by the dimwit majority. This is one reason why the so-called “good” public school is a dangerous illusion.

What do we mean, after all, when we speak of schools in an affluent community like Newton, Massachusetts, as “good” schools? Well, the kids are the offspring of well-educated and successful parents, and tend to replicate their parents’ success in terms of standardized test scores. No one who has read The Bell Curve is surprised by this, but the myth of the “good” public school involves the illusion that it is the school, rather than the parents, who deserve credit for their children’s success. This false claim — that students in Newton do better than in South Boston because the teachers in Newton are better — is one of the prejudicial beliefs built into this system, along with the equally false belief that, unless someone has official certification as a teacher, they are unqualified to teach, much less to criticize what these so-called “professionals” are doing to children at taxpayers’ expense in the name of “education.”

Intelligent and curious parents must eventually become aware of problems in their child’s public school. The child comes home upset because of a misbehaving classmate, or there’s something about school policy or curriculum that seems sketchy, and so you inquire with the teacher. This is when you are told the well-rehearsed answer that you are the only parents who has complained. “Wait a minute,” you say, “I wasn’t complaining, I was just trying to find out what’s going on.” But the educational bureaucrat has been trained to defend the system against any nosy parent who might ask questions, and your curiosity about what’s going on behind the curtain of secrecy that surrounds the process of “education” — expressing concern for your child — marks you as a potential enemy. If you worry that your child is endangered by the disruptive bully in her kindergarten class, you are calling into question the system’s discipline policy. Parents who raise questions about the curriculum and pedagogy are, of course, dismissed as unqualified to judge what their child should be taught, or how best to teach them.

Public school teachers and administrators take extraordinary measures to conceal any problems in the system from parents. It is the preservation of the system — the taxpayer-funded government bureaucracy — to which the faculty and staff are fanatically committed, rather than to any benefit that this system might provide your child. So when parents begin to raise concerns about what’s going on behind this curtain of secrecy, the employees of the system will close ranks against the parents, like a Phoenician phalanx guarding itself against an attack by hostile cavalry.

Parents are the enemy — this attitude is deeply entrenched in the mentality of educational bureaucrat, and once you figure this out, you begin to realize that, in the minds of the administration and faculty, you are their inferior, unqualified to know what’s best for your child.

Well, never get me started on what’s wrong with the American public education system or I’ll rant until I run out breath. This situation in Newton, Massachusetts — where Jewish children are being taught by left-wing radicals who consider it “social justice” to support Hamas — is the tip of a very large iceberg, as I say. Our existing system of public schools is based on a flawed model, imported from 19th-century Prussia by Horace Mann, and has not been improved, but rather has become much worse, as a result of decades of efforts to “reform” it. My own personal policy is what I call Maximum Feasible Non-Cooperation. Don’t send your kids to public schools, don’t accept employment in the system, never say anything good about the system, and encourage everyone you know to do the same. If all the good parents would pull their kids out of the system, leaving the government bureaucrats with classrooms full of the offspring of bad parents, the system would collapse under its own weight. Then we could shut the whole damned thing down, fire all the employees, sell all the buildings and equipment at public auction, and thank God in heaven that future generations of American children will never have to endure this nightmare that has been foisted on our nation for so long.

(Hat-tip: David Bernstein at Instapundit.)

Category: Education

In The Mailbox: 08.06.18

Posted on | August 7, 2018 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 08.06.18

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: A Review – Death Of A Nation
Twitchy: Dylan Mathews Says Doctors Will Just Have To Take A Massive Pay Cut So U.S. Can Be More Like Canada
Louder With Crowder: Facebook Removes Infowars Page For “Violating Community Standards”

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: I See Cats In Your Future, Many Cats, also, Sunday Cigars, Whiskey, & Pork
American Power: Ericka Anderson, Leaving Cloud 9, also, Trump Revives Tough Sanctions On Iran
American Thinker: The First Fake Media-Induced Mental Illness
BattleSwarm: Sarah Jeong – Eight Or Nine Racist Tweets? More Like 800, also, Socialist Venezuelan President Maduro Target Of Drone Attack?
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday, also, The “Benefits” Of The Light Attack Experiment? No, Try The Shame
Da Tech Guy: Chicago Needs To Crack Down On Illegal Expressway-Blocking Protests, also, Why You Should Believe Very Little Of What You See
Don Surber: EPA Finally Admits Ethanol Harms The Environment
Dustbury: Do Not Taunt Happy Fun Bison, also, Strange Search Engine Queries
First Street Journal: The First Amendment And Assimilation Of Immigrants
Fred On Everything: Cruelty Legitimized
The Geller Report: France Passes Law Saying Children Can Consent To Sex With Adults, also, First-Ever Muslim Candidate For Governor Tied To Racist, Antisemitic Nation Of Islam
Hogewash: But It’s OK When We Do It, also, Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also also, Shadowbanning A Conservative
JustOneMinute: I Love A Puzzle, also, Defying Gravity
Legal Insurrection: Twitter Suspended Candace Owens For Changing “White” To “Black” In Sarah Jeong’s Tweets, also, Israel & India Deepen Technology Cooperation
The PanAm Post: How Nicholas Maduro Facilitates The Emigration Of Venezuelan Criminals
Power Line: Victor Davis Hanson – For Elizabeth Heng, also, No Straw Man Here – The Mask Slips In Santa Barbara
Shark Tank: Gaetz Reveals New “Make America Gaetz Again” Slogan
Shot In The Dark: Illiterates Lead
STUMP: Around The Pension-O-Sphere
The Jawa Report: In Which The Jawas Offer Alex Jones Hosting
The Political Hat: Nicaraguan Violence & Venezuelan Breaking Points
This Ain’t Hell: Spousal Unit Gets The Boot, also, Join The Exciting World Of Stolen Valor Investigation
Victory Girls: Anne Frank Reimagined – Repulsive In Every Way, also, Portland Isn’t Just Weird Anymore, It’s A Violent Hellhole
Volokh Conspiracy: “Racial Ridicule” Is A Crime In Connecticut – And People Are Being Prosecuted
Weasel Zippers: Peter Fonda Encourages Vote Fraud To Help Democrats Win, also, After Staffer Found To Be Spy, Questions Emerge On How Close Diane Feinstein Is To Chicoms
Mark Steyn: Less Than Meets The (Queer) Eye – Gilda, also, Nature Boy

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Category: Linkagery

Russia! Russia! Russia!

Posted on | August 6, 2018 | Comments Off on Russia! Russia! Russia!

The headline stack on top of this morning’s Drudge Report:

UPDATE: Trump Tower meeting with Russians WAS meant to 'get information' on Hillary... 'I did not know about it!' Trump would fight any special counsel subpoena... WASH POST: Precarious moment in presidency...

Since Sunday, I’ve been watching CNN (so you don’t have to) and they’re 24/7 wall-to-wall on this, as might be expected. Whenever they bring on “analysts” to comment on the story, there is never anyone to present the pro-Trump side of the argument, i.e., that this whole thing was a set-up, a “honey trap” orchestrated by Fusion GPS, which was working for the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign. Furthermore, the way this Trump Tower meeting became public knowledge was that the Obama administration had obtained warrants to conduct surveillance of the Trump campaign based on the phone Steele dossier, which was commissioned by Fusion GPS with money supplied by Democrats.

This is what I explained last month:

Natalia Veselnitskaya was thick as thieves with Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS, and it seems safe to conclude she was an agent-provocateur, hired to lure Trump campaign officials into a meeting which could then be used as “proof” that Trump was a Putin stooge.
Because Fusion GPS was working for the Clinton campaign, and because Fusion GPS also produced the phony Steele dossier that was apparently the main “evidence” used to get a FISA warrant to launch federal surveillance of Trump campaign officials, the obvious 2+2 conclusion is that Veselnitskaya was part of a set-up, a trap, a “sting.” Her assignment, we may suppose, was to get Trump campaign officials to say something that could be captured via surveillance to serve as “proof” that the Republican candidate was doing something illegal with Russians.

Nothing reported in the past month has changed these facts. All that we have learned is that Trump, as might be expected, didn’t want to admit that his campaign got suckered into this Democrat-rigged trap.

People who are getting their “news” from CNN are not being told this. CNN’s coverage assumes as its first premise that Trump is guilty, and all they have to do is talk about “evidence” of his guilt. In other words, CNN is part and parcel of the Democrat Party’s disinformation campaign, producing partisan propaganda thinly disguised as “news.”

By the way, readers might want to hit the tip jar for $5 or $10 to help compensate me for the psychological trauma of watching CNN all day.

Category: CNN, Donald Trump, Media Bias, Russia

‘Male Feminist’ Professor Michael Kimmel Accused of Sexual Harassment

Posted on | August 6, 2018 | Comments Off on ‘Male Feminist’ Professor Michael Kimmel Accused of Sexual Harassment

Nothing is more predictable than a “male feminist” being a creep. Notice how the Chronicle of Higher Education buries the lead here:

A sociologist at Stony Brook University who was slated to receive a national award this month for his career?long contributions to gender equality will delay accepting the award for six months, in light of rumors he said were circulating about his professional behavior.
Michael Kimmel, a professor of sociology and gender studies at Stony Brook, said in a statement released on Wednesday that he wanted to give those who feel they have been mistreated by him time to file complaints with the American Sociological Association.
Kimmel, who founded Stony Brook’s Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities in 2013, had been announced as the 2018 recipient of the Jessie Bernard Award, which was to be given this month at the association’s annual meeting in Philadelphia. The award recognizes scholarly work over a person’s career “that has enlarged the horizons of sociology to encompass fully the role of women in society.”
“I have been informed that there are rumors circulating about my professional conduct that suggest I have behaved unethically.” Kimmel, who has been anonymously accused of sexual harassment by former students, has written several books including Guyland: the Perilous World Where Boys Become Men and Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era. On his website, he describes himself as “an activist for gender equality for more than 30 years.” . . .
In an email to The Chronicle on Wednesday in response to questions about his statement and anonymous accusations of sexual harassment, Kimmel wrote that he appreciated the association’s willingness to “extend the timeline for the vetting process.”
“I’ve spent my entire career advocating for gender equality, and believe I have been professional and respectful in my relationships with women,” he wrote. . . .

You have to go 14 paragraphs deep into this article before finally encountering the substance of the accusations against Kimmel:

A former graduate student who asked not to be identified, fearing retaliation, told The Chronicle that Kimmel suggested about six weeks into her graduate study, and then later in her career, that they sleep together. She said he complimented her on her appearance and told her that because of her looks, she’d have to work hard to prove to people that she wasn’t sleeping with someone to get where she was. “I think he thought he was being helpful,” she said.
Feeling her main worth was as a “pretty object,” who titillated other scholars, her confidence in her work plummeted and she “sabotaged” opportunities to publish, she said. She called it a “travesty” that he was receiving the Jessie Bernard award. Kimmel declined to comment on the specific allegations.
One female sociologist who has been a leader in the association but who asked to remain anonymous told The Chronicle that she had heard similar accusations from other female scholars about Kimmel “through the whisper network.” She said that “no one is comfortable coming forward and there’s not a lot our professional organization can do without a person willing to make a first?hand claim.”

You can read the whole thing (thanks to Philip Cohen on Twitter).

How shall we address this? There is no accusation, so far as we know, that Professor Kimmel was offering a quid pro quo to the anonymous graduate student. He merely “suggested . . . that they sleep together.” We may assume that she rejected this suggestion, and she does not claim that Professor Kimmel treated her badly as a consequence of this rejection.

There are also “similar accusations . . . through the whisper network,” but unless there is something worse than this, most people would not believe that Professor Kimmel is the Harvey Weinstein of academia.

Let’s talk about the concept of “sexual harassment” in general. Professor Kimmel is married to Fordham University Professor Amy Aronson, and if he was banging a graduate student, that would be adultery. However, feminism has no concept of sexual morality. Feminism endorses any kind of perverse and deviant sexual activity, so long as it’s consensual, and because their ideology is explicitly anti-marriage and anti-religion, feminists are scarcely in a position to accuse Professor Kimmel of violating the Seventh Commandment: “Sinner!”

The anonymous former graduate student doesn’t accuse Professor Kimmel of groping her against her will or anything like that. Unless the rumored “similar accusations” include non-consensual behavior, what he stands accused of is (a) commenting on the student’s good looks, and (b) saying that he’d be interested in having sex with her.

BREAKING NEWS: HETEROSEXUAL MAN
LIKES GOOD-LOOKING WOMEN!

Is it too much to expect people in academia to behave like grown-ups? If you’re a 23-year-old graduate student, and a professor makes a pass at you, can’t you just brush him off politely? “I’m flattered, Professor, but you’re a married man, and besides, I’m a feminist who hates all men, you disgusting heteropatriarchal oppressor.”

Far be it from me, however, to defend a “male feminist.” Nothing would make me happier than seeing Professor Kimmel’s reputation and career destroyed by a full-scale #MeToo witch-hunt. If he were to be bankrupted by lawsuits and sent to federal prison, I would celebrate his destruction. In fact, I’m half tempted to tip the FBI to my suspicion that Professor Kimmel is a dangerous sexual predator who has committed crimes so heinous that I would hesitate even to describe them in print. If the FBI did a quick check of his passport history and discovered he’s made trips to Thailand or Cambodia, I wouldn’t be surprised. But I digress . . .

My suspicions about Professor Kimmel are merely suspicions, however, based on the fact that 100% of “male feminists” are creeps.

Look: Guys want to get laid. This should not shock anyone. However, when a guy makes a point of ostentatiously declaring himself “an activist for gender equality,” we should be suspicious of his motives.

P.S.: I highly recommend Professor Daphne Patai’s Heterophobia: Sexual Harassment and the Future of Feminism as an analysis of this subject. Chapter 6 (pp. 129-167) offers an in-depth examination of the anti-heterosexual ideology of academic feminism.

Category: Education, Sex Trouble

Rule Five Sunday: Summer Event Silliness

Posted on | August 5, 2018 | 3 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

One of the perennial tropes in anime and manga is the “beach episode” where everyone heads for the beach and we get to see everyone in their swimsuits. The phone game Fate/Grand Order (based on Fate/Stay Night) is no exception, with a two-week Summer Event featuring a tropical island and a number of female servants in attractive swimwear – including the Celtic goddess of death, Scathach, who’s actually off-screen for most of the event.

The very definition of cute but deadly.

Ninety Miles From Tyranny brings us Hot Pick of the Late Night, The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #335, Morning Mistress, and Girls With Guns. At Animal Magnetism, it’s Rule Five Economic Illiteracy Friday and the Saturday Gingermageddon.

EBL continues on her fishy ways with Darcizzle Fishing, Friday Night Fishing, Bigfoot Erotica, Sarah Jeong, Alison Krauss, Sandwiches, National Watermelon Day, and Multicultural Fishing.

A View From The Beach has Jennifer Aniston Just Walked Away, Poles Invent Pussy Beer, Friday Beach Fashion, More DIY Russiagate, Wet T-Shirt Thursday, A Deal is a Deal, “Walking Blues”, The Prudes Are Winning, and #ThemToo: Six Women Come Out With Accusations Against CBS’s Les Moonves.

Proof Positive’s Friday Night Babe is Julie Engelbrecht, his Vintage Babe is Elena Verdugo, and Sex in Advertising is covered by Victoria Is Hiding Something. At Dustbury, it’s Nelydia Senrose and Laura Harring.

Thanks to everyone for the luscious linkagery!

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Category: Rule 5

Woman-Hating @UKLabour Party Not Sure If They Also Hate Jews Enough

Posted on | August 5, 2018 | Comments Off on Woman-Hating @UKLabour Party Not Sure If They Also Hate Jews Enough

Britain’s left-wing Labour Party has alienated many women, first by enabling Muslim rape gangs that preyed on English girls and then by taking sides with transgender activists against women on various issues. Not to mention the accusations of widespread abusive behavior toward women by Labour officials. Now, it seems, Labour can’t decide whether anti-Semitism is a bad thing:

Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, says that the party will “disappear into a vortex of eternal shame and embarrassment” and render itself unfit for government, unless it calls an immediate halt to damaging arguments over antisemitism.
Speaking to the Observer, Watson called on Jeremy Corbyn to drop without delay internal inquiries into two Labour MPs — Margaret Hodge and Ian Austin — who both lost family members in the Holocaust and now face possible disciplinary charges after furious outbursts over the party’s stance on antisemitism. . . .
Writing in the Guardian, Corbyn attempted to call a halt to arguments with the Jewish community and many of his own MPs by acknowledging the party has “a real problem” over the issue, insisting that people who express antisemitic views “have no place in our movement”. . . .
Watson’s intervention came as Corbyn was forced to “entirely disassociate” himself from an organisation whose website lists him as a member of its international advisory panel and which openly supported a prominent writer convicted of Holocaust denial. In 1996, the Just World Trust, an international NGO that has been a trenchant critic of Israel, wrote a letter defending the controversial French philosopher Roger Garaudy, who denied that the killing of Jews by the Nazis constituted genocide. . . .
“Jeremy Corbyn must be the unluckiest anti-racist in history,” said Dave Rich, head of policy at the Community Security Trust, the charity set up to protect the Jewish community. “He repeatedly manages to get involved with organisations and people that promote antisemitism and Holocaust denial, apparently without ever noticing anything is amiss. It’s the same old excuse and it wore thin long ago.”

Well, if you’re going to side with transgender activists who claim women can have penises, what’s a little Holocaust denial? And how much of Labour’s hatred of capitalism is really about hating Jews?

Category: Great Britain

Yes, Twitter Is Biased. Next Question?

Posted on | August 5, 2018 | 1 Comment

Anyone with two eyes and a brain already knew this. Now confirmed:

After Twitter was caught last month “shadow-banning” Republicans, while giving Democrats unrestricted voice, the social-media giant insisted it has no political agenda. But records of its political contributions show board members, top executives and major shareholders have all given overwhelmingly to Democrats, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, while snubbing Republicans and Donald Trump. . . .
“We enforce our rules without political bias,” Twitter Chief Legal Officer Vijaya Gadde said in a statement.
But Republicans aren’t buying it. They blame the unequal treatment on political bias, and they argue the timing is suspicious. They say Republican voices are being suppressed on the 355 million-user platform just months before the highly contentious November congressional elections.
They certainly have a point about bias. Senior Twitter executives heavily favor Democrats over Republicans in their political giving.
Federal Election Commission records show that Gadde, for starters, has given exclusively to Democratic candidates, including the maximum donations allowed to both Clinton’s and Obama’s campaigns. In 2016, she gave $2,700 to Democratic candidate Kamala Harris of California, who won her US Senate bid.
Twitter CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey also donates only to Democrats. And in 2017, he and executive chairman Omid Kordestani together donated $530,000 to the ACLU to fight Trump’s executive order imposing a temporary travel ban on immigrants from high-risk Muslim countries, which Dorsey called “upsetting” but which the Supreme Court recently ruled constitutional. All told, Twitter gave $1.6 million to the anti-Trump ban effort.
Kordestani is a big Democrat donor, contributing the maximums to Clinton and Obama, as well as to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. In 2011, moreover, the Tehran-born exec gave $35,800 to the Obama Victory Fund and another $30,800 to the Democratic National Committee. . . .

Details, details. We already knew Twitter was a dishonest partisan operation. Their claim to believe in free speech was another Democrat lie.

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.)

Category: Media Bias